NASCAR 2011: Gentlemen and ladies, start your engines...

Dave Stubbs, THE GAZETTE08.17.2011

A scene from last August's NASCAR Nationwide Series Napa Auto Parts 200 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal.Jason Smith
/ The Gazette

Jacques Villeneuve is chased by Brendan Gaughan as they take the Senna curve during the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal on August 29th 2010.Vincenzo D'Alto
/ THE GAZETTE

This weekend’s fifth annual NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 has more twists and turns than Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the historic track whose asphalt soon will be blackened by many Goodyear Eagles.

The talk heading into the season’s 24th of 34 Nationwide races isn’t just about horsepower and the men and women who will let it loose.

There’s the significant issue of politics, and whether this race will be NASCAR’s final go-around in Montreal.

In June, the provincial government denied the request of race organizers for a $500,000 tourism-department investment to help promote the event beyond Quebec. Now it’s up to Daytona, Fla.-based International Speedway Corp. and its subsidiary, Stock-Car Montréal, to determine whether they wish to return, based on the balance sheet and a new lease to be negotiated with Jean Drapeau Park for the right to keep running on the Île Notre Dame circuit.

A decision on the future of the race isn’t likely to come until some time after the NAPA 200, tied into the broader picture of NASCAR’s full 2012 schedule.

The more compelling stories about this year’s race aren’t in the boardroom, but in the garage and on the track:

Three of four previous Montreal winners are expected to compete: Toronto’s Ron Fellows (2008); Carl Edwards (2009); and Boris Said (2010). Only 2007’s inaugural champion, Kevin Harvick, won’t be taking part. It’s highly unlikely, however, that Saturday’s finish will be closer than last year’s, Said having beaten Max Papis to the 2010 checkers by a Nationwide Series road-course-record 12/1,000ths of a second.

It is, by a huge margin, the closest drivers’ race in the five years NASCAR has been coming to Montreal. Ranked third through fifth are Elliot Sadler of Kevin Harvick Inc., 24 points out of the lead; Aric Almirola of JR Motorsports, 70 back; and Turner’s Justin Allgaier, 80 behind.

Stenhouse Jr. and Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards have had a spirited, fender-rubbing, sheet metal-smudging duel going for a few races. For now they’re tolerating each other – Edwards isn’t even in the points race, having decided at season start to score only in the elite Sprint Cup Series – but on the tight, unforgiving Villeneuve circuit, there will be little room for the two to avoid each other should they find themselves running nose-to-tail or door-to-door.

A record number of Quebecers are entered: 1997 Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve and this year’s Indianapolis 500 polesitter Alex Tagliani, as well as veteran Patrick Carpentier, youngster Andrew Ranger, Trois Rivières brothers Jean-François and Louis-Philippe Dumoulin, and Maryeve Dufault, the first Canadian woman to run a Nationwide Series race.

Carpentier should be the sentimental favourite of every fan, having announced that this race will be the last in his 27-year racing career before he retires to a career in Las Vegas real estate and construction. The 40-year-old native of Joliette won his first significant race on the Villeneuve circuit, capturing the Toyota Atlantic event that was on the undercard of the 1996 Formula One Canadian Grand Prix, and has twice been a Nationwide runner-up here.

Two women are expected in the field, which is two more than in the four previous NAPA 200s combined. Focus will be on Roscoe, Ill.-native Danica Patrick, who’s running the full IndyCar season for Andretti Autosport while racing a part-time Nationwide schedule for JR Motorsports. Patrick has previously run the Villeneuve circuit three times, all in open-wheel cars – in Barber Dodge in 2002 and Toyota Atlantic in 2003 and ’04. She’ll be joined by Maryeve Dufault of Sorel, Que., an ARCA Series rookie entered in her first career Nationwide start.

Australian Marcos Ambrose returns with Richard Petty Motorsport for a fifth try at the elusive win, having led a stunning 149 of the 249 laps he’s run here – but never the all-important final one. His first career Sprint Cup win, earned this past Monday (Aug. 15) at Watkins Glen, brings him here on a road-course high.

Pack a poncho if you’re headed to Île Notre Dame because, again, the race will run on a dry or wet Villeneuve track. Goodyear will bring 1,000 dry-compound Eagles with another 800 wet-compound radials just in case. Ron Fellows’s waterlogged 48-lap victory in 2008 – 25 fewer laps than scheduled – was NASCAR’s first point-scoring race run in the rain, which is a charitable way to describe the monsoon conditions. But unlike that high-tide fun, every car in Montreal this weekend will be equipped with wipers and defoggers.

This will be the first time the “new” Nationwide car will run in Montreal, the exhaustively developed chassis and improved safety elements unveiled last year and fully phased in this season.

Three support races will entertain fans between Nationwide laps – the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, with a record entry of 37 cars including that of former Canadiens defenceman Patrice Brisebois; the Daytona Prototypes and GT classes of the robust Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series; and the Canadian Touring Car Championship.

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